Christopher Nolan’s Inception became only the third film this year (Alice in Wonderland and Shrek Forever after were the others) to top the box office for three weeks in a row.  The mind-twisting original science fiction saga fell just 36% while earning an estimated $27.5 million and bringing its domestic total to $193.3 million after only 17 days of release.  Inception’s overseas total has reached $170 million, which gives the Warner Bros. release a worldwide total of $363 million against a cost of $160 million.

Paramount’s Dinner for Schmucks, a remake of the 1998 French film The Dinner Game (Le Diner de cons) written and directed by Francis Veber, debuted strongly in second place with an estimated $23.3 million.  Schmucks attracted an audience that skewed male (55%) and a bit older (54% over 25).  With a mediocre CinemaScore of “B” it is not clear that Schmucks will be ablet to rival Steve Carell’s other summer comedy hit Date Night at the box office.  It will receive some direct competition this weekend when the Will Ferrell vehicle The Other Guys opens.

With strong holdover performances from Salt ($19.3 million) and Despicable Me ($15.5 million), the box office total soared 20% over the same weekend last year when Funny People debuted to $22.7 million, but was down 9% from 2008 when The Dark Knight stayed at #1 with a total of $42.7 million. 

While Schmucks opened successfully, the same can’t be said about the weekend’s other two new films, the 3-D kid pic Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and the Zac Efron’ weepie Charlie St. Cloud disappointed.  Cats & Dogs earned an estimated $12.5 million, one of the year’s worst debuts for a 3-D movie—which surely indicates the presence of some sort of box office justice, at least for the snide front office moron who decided to include a reference to one of Ian Fleming’s most egregious lapses into tasteless sexism in the title of a picture aimed at children. 

The audience for Charlie St. Cloud was overwhelmingly female (79%) and young (59% under 25).  A 33% decline from Friday to Saturday certainly doesn’t bode well for this turkey, which scored only a 26% positive rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Pixar’s Toy Story 3 remained in the top 10 for the seventh week and now seems assured of making it past the $400 million barrier.  At the other end of the success spectrum, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice suffered the biggest drop in the top ten (55%) finishing at #9 and bringing its total to $51.8 million.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse also made the top ten (though just barely) in its 5th weekend.  It should sneak past the $300 million mark before it’s done.